


Sherlollipops - You Are Cordially Invited

by MizJoely



Series: 221 Sherlollipops [68]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Cabin Pressure - Freeform, Crossover, F/M, Fluff, Sherlolly - Freeform, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-04
Updated: 2015-03-04
Packaged: 2018-03-16 06:32:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3477989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MizJoely/pseuds/MizJoely
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Molly needs a favor, and Sherlock seems the perfect man for the job - but is he?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sherlollipops - You Are Cordially Invited

**Author's Note:**

> Rated T for mentions of drug addiction and murder. Written for Sherlolly Appreciation Week over on tumblr, with the prompt/theme being "First Kiss". Also a tiny kinda-sorta crossover with the BBC radio program "Cabin Pressure", in which Benedict Cumberbatch voiced the character of Martin Crieff (it's super funny so if you aren't familiar with it you should absolutely listen to it sometime!). You don't need to know anything about the show to (I hope) enjoy this story. Thanks for taking the time to read and comment, as always!

The sound of frantic pounding on the door interrupted Sherlock’s violin playing; the bow screeched across the strings and he turned a scowl toward the half-open door of his flat. “Mrs. Hudson!” he bellowed, lifting the violin back to his chin. “Tell whoever it is I’m unavailable!”

“Not your doorkeeper, Sherlock!” Mrs. Hudson’s admonishment floated up the stairs only to fall on willfully deaf ears as he scraped the bow across the strings in a deliberately discordant series of notes.

The sound of muffled voices from the ground floor entryway barely registered on his consciousness, but the louder noise of feet thundering up the wooden steps caught his attention. With another scowl, he turned his back on the door and faced the open window, shoulders hunched and body language very much shouting ‘go away’.

“Sherlock!”

At the sound of that unexpectedly familiar voice, he stiffened in surprise, then took a moment to compose himself before turning to see Molly Hooper standing uncertainly in the doorway. “Molly,” he acknowledged, keeping his voice level and his expression neutral, although he was extremely curious to know what brought her to his flat in such obvious agitation. The faux-Moriarty case had been long resolved, his deeds regarding Magnussen – well, no need to be coy, his murder of that evil man – had been pardoned, and Molly had even relented enough to forgive him for going back to the needle during that case.

So what did she need from him now?

A tingle of excitement went up his spine at the thought of _her_ actually needing _him_ for a change. Was she being blackmailed, had she been robbed, was she in need of comfort because her odious feline had finally shuffled off this mortal coil?

No, he decided as he studied her, a vague sense of disappointment washing over him. Nothing so desperate. She was under no outside threat, he very much doubted she needed him to help fake her own death – she’d be more than adequate at that task herself! – so what…

While he’d been lost in his own musings, she’d ducked her head and was hurriedly fishing through the contents of her oversized handbag, muttering impatiently as she did so. He blinked and watched as she muttered a triumphant, “Aha!” and snatched a large, cream-colored envelope out, waving it in the air. “Sherlock, I’ve never played the ‘you owe me’ card,” she began, only to fall silent as he turned his back on her and swiftly made his way to his fireplace mantle. “Sherlock?” She sounded uncertain, but since he was about to clarify things for her, he ignored her, working the clasp-knife free of the pile of correspondence pinned to the scarred wooden length below the mirror.

He turned to face her, holding up an identical – well, except for the name written so elegantly on the front, and the knife-scar, of course – envelope. “So, Molly,” he said conversationally, “how do you know my cousin Martin? Or are you acquainted with Princess Theresa of Liechtenstein?”

“You’re – you’re Marty’s cousin?”

Ah, well that answered _that_ question. “How long did you two date?” Sherlock asked, knowing he sounded – and bloody well looked – petulant, and not caring. Well, not much. Molly would surely attribute his sudden sour attitude to a combination of having been interrupted while he was playing the violin and not having already deduced that she’d dated his cousin at some point. She wasn’t from Wokingham, so it hadn’t been as a teenager – no, _Marty’s_ first girlfriend had been that spotty blonde with the overbite. He’d then dated that South African uni student, the one who’d been working at a café – ah. “You met him while you were finishing up your studies,” he said flatly. “You dated for six weeks, no more than two months. No doubt his obsession with becoming a pilot finally drove you away, the way it did his previous two girlfriends. So why,” he asked, stalking over to her and plucking the invite from between her fingers, glowering down at her the entire time, “did my dear cousin see fit to invite you to his wedding?”

“Wrong on all counts,” Molly snapped, snatching the invitation back and holding it protectively to her chest, brown eyes darkening with anger. He felt his heart skip a beat and refused to examine why that might be. 

He raised an eyebrow, refusing to back up by so much as an inch. “What, so he didn’t invite you?” he said mockingly. “You nicked that invite from someone else?”

She flushed, but also refused to give ground, even though she had to crane her neck in order to continue meeting his gaze. “No, it’s mine. But Marty and I dated the first year I started working at Bart’s, we dated for six months, and we broke up when he got his first job as a captain at MJN Air in Fitton, because I didn’t think a long-distance relationship would work out. I loved how determined he was to be a pilot even though it seemed the universe was lined up against him. I find that sort of complete dedication to a goal, that sort of singularity of purpose…” She looked Sherlock up and down deliberately, and he flinched back a step before forcing himself to stay where he was, “…very sexy.”

“He hates being called Marty.” Sherlock blurted out the first thing that came to mind, then winced as he realized why his cousin disliked that particular nickname – one he hadn’t minded during his childhood, only after his third breakup with someone Sherlock hadn’t bothered to learn the details of. Molly Hooper. Martin had bemoaned her loss more than once, until gradually the fulfillment of his lifelong ambition of becoming not only a pilot but a captain had eased the sting.

Not that the two of them were particularly close; Sherlock remembered with a sense of shame all the times he’d sneered at Martin’s ambitions. Of course, at the time he’d been a drug-addicted, self-important little shit, as Mycroft loved to point out, but still. At least Martin had been gracious enough to let childhood bygones be bygones, as witness the invite he still held clutched in his hands. “Why do you want to go to Martin’s wedding? And,” he added as a sudden suspicion – no, a sudden _deduction_ – seized him, “what’s this favor you wanted to ask me?”

Now Molly was on the defensive; she nervously dropped her gaze, fiddling with the envelope as if suddenly unsure what to do with her hands. “I, uh, well, the thing is…Marty and I parted friendly if not friends, but you already know that, of course. And, the thing is, the last time we emailed each other I was, uh, still engaged. To Tom,” she added, as if Sherlock could ever forget meat dagger’s real name. The man with whom Molly had been having, in her own words, ‘quite a lot of sex’ at one point. Hmph. If anyone deserved to be having quite a lot of sex with her it was…he cut that thought off quickly. 

“Anyway,” Molly continued to ramble, her cheeks flushing a rather becoming shade of pink, “I just…well, I never told him that Tom and I had broken things off. So the invite is for the two of us, and I just…I didn’t want to show up at Marty’s wedding being the sad ex-girlfriend with no date,” she said in a rush, the pink deepening, teeth tugging at her lower lip while her hands continued to virtually mangle the invite she still held. “So I thought I’d ask you to sort of pretend to be my date, but since you’re Marty’s cousin, well, of course that wouldn’t work. And since you’re already invited I’m sure you already have a date, that maid of honor of Mary’s, she seemed to get over being mad at you, I overheard you two talking about if you ever needed anyone on your arm to impress someone she’d be happy to do it, and so…”

Molly doubtlessly would have continued to meander on, her unhappiness growing with every word, if not for two things: first, Sherlock firmly plucked the invite from her hand, tossing it and his own over his shoulder to land where they might, and second, he then lowered his head and pressed a very determined kiss to her lips.

When the kiss ended, she mumbled against his lips, “What was that for?”

“Partly to shut you up,” he admitted candidly as he rested his forehead against hers, “and partly because I wanted to. Have wanted to for quite a long time now, actually.” He pulled back to peer into her eyes, brow crinkled anxiously as he tried to gauge her reaction. “Was that not good?”

Molly grinned, looping her arms round his neck and tiptoeing up to plant a peck on his cheek. “As first kisses go, it certainly wasn’t my worst!”

Sherlock frowned. “I didn’t mean the kiss itself, I’m relatively clear on the technique by now,” he said, sounding a bit tetchy. “I meant…”

“I know what you meant,” Molly interrupted him with a small smile. “And yeah, it was good, Sherlock. Very good.” She started to press her lips against his, then pulled back. “Unless that was a one-off, I’d like to keep on with the kissing part of our relationship. And eventually other things.”

“I’ll be a rubbish boyfriend,” Sherlock warned her after enthusiastically meeting her lips with his own for a longer, much less chaste kiss. He was a bit breathless, but determined to say his piece. “If this date to my cousin’s wedding doesn’t prove it to you, nothing will. You know you’ll spend the entire time either warning me off from making deductions, or hunting me down wherever I’ve gone off to have a smoke.”

“Well, I’m used to the first and as for the latter,” she replied, far too calmly for his peace of mind, “I can’t make you quit but I can tell you that it might come down to choice between your habit and me, I’m afraid. Lung cancer did my dad in, and I won’t stand by and watch it take someone else I love if I have anything to say about it.”

Love. She’d said it, the word they’d been dancing around for so many years now. The emotion he’d always disdained, in spite of the excellent example his own parents had given him since birth. The emotion he’d known Molly felt for him even if he’d originally put it down to a crush, an infatuation that would someday burn itself out. 

Well, so much for that. Even when Molly had managed to get herself engaged to that idi—uh, to her former fiancé, when she’d told herself and everyone else that she’d moved on, the truth was plain to anyone who cared to look: she’d never stopped loving him, Sherlock Holmes. The man who least deserved her devotion.

The man who was doubly determined now to never let her down, not in the ways that truly mattered. “If it ever comes down to a choice between you and cigarettes – or you and anything else I’ve ever allowed myself to become addicted to – I already know which one I’d choose,” he told her seriously. He lowered his face to hers for a third kiss, pulling back when it ended to murmur into her ear, “Now let’s shock the hell out of everyone at that wedding by showing up together, shall we?”

And Molly was all too happy to breathlessly offer her agreement.


End file.
